Business Administration (BA)

This course provides a breadth of statistical skills necessary for advanced data analysis. Students will learn how to employ data analytic processes that address challenges associated with experiments, surveys, time-series, panels, and/or multilevel models. Software packages, concepts, and business applications will vary and evolve to keep pace with technology, theory, and instructor interest.

This course is an introduction to the mathematical methods and tools of managerial decision making under uncertainty. While the main topics of the course are probability, statistics, decision analysis, simulation, and regression which are mathematical by nature, emphasis is placed on improving an intuitive understanding of the underlying issues in these topics. Rather than simply memorizing mathematical formulas, the student is encouraged to gain a better understanding of why certain concepts are used, and to learn what type of information is relevant to evaluate different situations of uncertainty. Students are expected to apply and discuss how the quantitative analysis they develop aides in business decision making. Students are expected to gain familiarity with various state of the art software packages for this analysis.

This course discusses topics in advanced microeconomic analysis with an emphasis on applications to applied research areas in business and other related disciplines. Topics include (but are not limited to) general equilibrium, choice under uncertainty, game theory, mechanism design, and behavioral economics. An area of particular focus is how incomplete and asymmetric information impacts competitive and strategic behavior by individuals and firms in a variety of applied settings. The materials emphasize theoretical models prevalent in microeconomic research, and students are expected to develop a familiarity with the use of mathematical modeling in economics. Whenever possible applications to related applied disciplines such as those in finance, supply chain management, accounting, and agricultural economics will be highlighted and discussed. Experimental methods will be used at times to motivate and discuss various economic principles.

An introduction to information technologies critical to business organizations.

A team-based course during which students will manage a simulated firm. B A 528 Business Simulation (1-3)Using the business simulation, teams of 4-5 students will compete against other teams in a particular industry. The team members will have to make all the decisions about how to run the firm, including overall strategy, product design, detailed marketing plans, factory operations, and financing.

This course provides students with an overview of the foundations of microeconomic analysis. The primary objective is to develop their ability to apply fundamental microeconomic concepts from price theory and game theory to a wide range of managerial decisions, as well as public policy issues.

Understand how macroeconomic events and policies affect the global economy and business decisions. B A 545 Business, Government and International Economics (2)Changes in interest rates, swings in the business cycle, new international trade agreements: All are macroeconomic events, and all can dramatically impact business. Accordingly the class is a synthesis of institutional, theoretical and historical perspectives.

This course provides the foundational skills necessary for conducting qualitative research in an applied business context. Students will explore some of the following topics: ethnography, observation, interviewing, grounded theory, discourse analysis, case method, narrative analysis, and action research. Through this process, students will be introduced to the epistemological foundations of qualitative research, learn different methods of data collection, introduce different techniques for coding and analyzing qualitative data, and provide guidance on creating rigorous qualitative research.

This course grounds students in the process of developing translational research broadly within the business domain. Students will learn how to identify applied challenges, develop research questions to address these challenges, design applied studies, and frame their work using rhetoric that connects with the applied community.

Analysis and application of concepts and techniques aimed at successfully developing and implementing competitive strategy in a complex business environment. B A 571 B A 571 Strategic Management for Converging Economies (3)This course introduces students to the field of strategic management and the skills and tools used by general managers to make strategic decisions. Students learn to use frameworks and perspectives for analyzing industries, competitors, and companies with an overall objective of positioning the firm to attain and sustain competitive advantage. Students learn how to identify the industry and firm-level determinants of profitability and then relate those factors to the development of competitive strategy within the context of responsible business practice. Students also learn how to evaluate strategies to understand how and why companies are successful or not. Finally, students will learn how senior managers use integrative approaches for solving strategic problems.

A team-based project course that requires students to analyze an actual business problem from a firm or nonprofit organization. B A 575 Capstone Business Case (4)The Capstone Business Case course is designed to allow second-year MBA students the chance to integrate the knowledge they have gained to date in the program. True business problems are not narrow, functional area problems; rather they require teams of people to come together to jointly solve a problem that extends across many areas. For example, to assess the commercial viability for a new product requires contributions from economics, marketing, supply chain, finance, strategy, and corporate innovation. The more opportunities students have to work on real cross-functional problems, the better prepared they will be to solve them once they are actually on the job. In addition, working on a team and having to present the results gives students the ability to practice communication, teamwork, and leadership skills that are vital to success on the job.

This course provides Doctorate of Business Administration students with the opportunity to identify a practice problem or clinical question and investigate the literature related to this selected area of interest. Students will develop and implement a comprehensive project to address the problem. Students will also disseminate the results in both a scholarly presentation and manuscript for publication.

Develop oral and written communication strategies to succeed in professional and academic contexts. B A 591 B A 591 Professional Development for Business Academics (1)This course is designed to equip doctoral students in business with skills and knowledge that will assist them in successfully completing their doctoral studies and moving on to a successful career as a business academic. These skills fall into three broad categories: 1) communication skills, 2) research skills, and 3) interpersonal skills (which include ethical behavior). The course is designed to cover many crucial skills and career issues that may be overlooked during a doctoral student's normal course of study.

Supervised off-campus, nongroup instruction, including field experiences, practicums, or internships. Written and oral critique of activity required.

Creative projects, including nonthesis research, which are supervised on an individual basis and which fall outside the scope of formal courses.

Formal courses given on a topical or special interest subject which may be offered infrequently.

Full-time graduate-level foreign study at an overseas institution with whom linkages have been established.

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This course provides an examination of the competitive landscape faced by marketing managers and the techniques used to provide data-driven insights to improve firm decision making. Students will learn how to assess the marketing environment which include the 5 Cs (Customer, Company, Collaborator, Competition, and Context) and how the 5 Cs impact marketing decision making. Students will learn how to utilize the marketing environment to establish a data-driven marketing strategy, i.e., segmentation, targeting, and positioning. As an example, this can include understanding how to conduct cluster analysis for segmentation, discriminant analysis for targeting, and perceptual and preference mapping for positioning. Students will learn how to make data-driven tactical marketing decisions, i.e., product, price, place, and promotion. As an example, this can include understanding how to conduct conjoint analysis for new product developing, base price analysis (BPA) for pricing, and marketing mix models for promotion decisions. Finally, students will learn how to link their data-driven marketing decision to important business outcomes, e.g., market share, return on marketing investment (ROMI), and profitability. Marketers will find the course provides them skills to immediately utilize data in their marketing decisions. Non-marketers will build skills related to understanding how data can be utilized for general business decision making. This course provides basic foundations of theories and tools used in subsequent elective courses in marketing.

This course is concerned with understanding and managing the behavior of people in organizations. The course will provide exposure to many of the concepts and skills that will help students become a more effective manager and organizational leader. This course includes tools that help students diagnose, understand, and develop solutions to management problems. The course will draw upon both the academic and practitioner literature to understand many facets of organizations and of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of people who work in them. It will focus on: 1) developing students' conceptual understanding of issues involved in managing people; 2) providing opportunities for direct or vicarious learning of managerial skills that have been identified by practicing managers as being most important to their performance; 3) giving students insight into their own attitudes, beliefs, and management philosophy; 4) creating a forum for discussing management issues with colleagues.

This course provides students with basic knowledge about predictable team dynamics and how to constructively deal with issues that arise in the first year M.B.A. teams. The course focuses on observation, diagnosis, and intervention skills for developing effective teams. Topics include diagnosing group dynamics, giving and receiving feedback to teammates, cross-cultural communication, and conflict management techniques. The course provides a real-time practicum for diagnosing team issues and addressing team problems and conflicts. Students apply team process concepts and techniques as they work to complete team projects in their other core M.B.A. classes. Students leave the course with an understanding of how to successfully lead a team and how to diagnose and correct dysfunctional team behaviors.

A study of ethical conduct in organizations and how cultural differences and personal conduct impact business decisions. This course focuses on developing the ability to understand ethical conduct in business organizations. Understanding how to think about and manage personal ethical conduct is a key learning objective along with a review of how an organization fosters a culture that supports ethical behavior. Students will also learn how cultural differences impact business decisions in a global environment.

The objective of the ethical leadership course is to raise awareness of the key role played as a manager and leader in creating and maintaining responsible business conduct in work groups and organizations. The course is also intended to enhance the student's ability to deal with the complexities of ethical decision making in today's dynamic business environment by clarifying and applying personal values.

The ability to effectively negotiate is an essential skill for managers. Negotiations not only occur with customers or clients, but also between bosses and subordinates, among teammates and across departments. Being able to craft a successful deal, especially in difficult circumstances, requires knowledge of yourself, as well as the substantive material that you are negotiating. Effective negotiators know their own limitations as well as their strengths. They also listen well and have good analytical skills. And, they can craft agreements that garner gains for themselves as well as for other if such gains are possible. Successful negotiating is also closely allied with successful teamwork since both processes require listening, persuasion, influence skills, and creativity. This course will give students an overview of the difference between traditional (distributive) bargaining and interest-based (or integrative) negotiations. Students will learn the rudiments of interest-based negotiating and practice it in several negotiation simulations. They will learn how to identify their own and others' interests, to create and claim value and to craft constructive agreements for all parties. The course will concentrate on two person and small group negotiations as well as to deal with difficult opponents.

BA 809 focuses on the development and application of business architecture as a holistic discipline that produces a common understanding of the organization that is used to align strategic objectives and tactical initiatives. Business architecture bridges the gap between a company's strategy and its successful execution. A business architecture approach that delivers business value to the enterprise produces several things: - An articulation of the strategic requirements of the enterprise - Models of the future state which illustrate what the enterprise should look like across multiple business viewpoints in support of the business strategy - A road map of the change initiatives required to reach that future state - The requirements, principles, standards, and guidelines that will steer the implementation of change initiatives The primary purpose of describing the business architecture of an enterprise is to improve the effectiveness or efficiency of the business itself. This includes innovations in the structure of an organization, the centralization or federation of business processes, the quality and timeliness of business information, and ensuring that money spent at the project level is in support of the strategic objectives of the larger enterprise. The course also develops additional capabilities for communicating, explaining, and justifying decisions relating to business architecture.

This course is designed to provide students with an overview of the role of operations in the organization, the kinds of decisions operations and supply chain managers make, and the impact of these decisions on the strategic and tactical position of the firm. Supply chain management is a particular focus in the course. The interaction of production, distribution and information resources plays a critical role in developing and sustaining a firm's competitive advantage.

Business enterprises convey information to their present and potential investors and creditors through financial reports. This course focuses on these financial reports, the data they contain, how users should read and interpret financial statements, and how users can incorporate this information into their investment decision making. It also examines how managers attempt to window dress these financial statements and how the numbers might affect managerial behavior.

This course provides an overview of statistical concepts and methods including descriptive statistics, probability, statistical inference, hypothesis testing, ANOVA, Correlation analysis, Contingency Tables, and Simple, Multiple, and Logistic Regression. The approach to course material will be both numerical and applied in order to provide a conceptual understanding of statistics. Applications of these methods will be applied to problems in various business settings such as Marketing, Finance, Accounting and Supply Chain.

One of the most important skills M.B.A.s develop in business school is the ability to demonstrate the value of their experiences. This course provides students with targeted opportunities to develop this skill as they clearly, forcefully, and professionally represent ideas, opinions, and solutions. Students will participate in various oral, written, and graphic projects during the course. After completing this class, students will have proficiency in representing their skills, expertise, and views to business partners (clients, colleagues, employers, and shareholders). This course is spread over two semesters (2 semesters, 4 M.B.A. modules). Residential M.B.A. students must complete all 4 credits (1 credit each in mods 1,2,3,4 for a total of 4 credits). The material builds on each prior module and applies communications skills to various applications.

Foundations in Management Accounting has two broad aims. First, it is designed to help students grasp the technical aspects of accounting for activities and processes within and between firms. Therefore, students will study methods of a) cost classification & estimation; b) cost measurement & allocation; c) profit planning; and d) evaluation and control of behavior. Second, the course emphasizes the context of managerial accounting. The firm suspends market prices that regulate behavior impersonally. Students will study how economic arrangements are organized in such non-market settings. Unlike financial accounting, the field of management accounting integrates notions from diverse fields including economics and sociology. Crucially, management accounting is situational and therefore requires and hones students' facility in both quantitative analyses and qualitative judgments.

This course will empower future business leaders to embrace the concepts and bring the state-of-the-art technologies into their organizations to improve the bottom line of their businesses. This course focuses on emerging technologies that are characterized by novelty, relatively fast growth, prominent impact, and uncertainty. They are the tools that can disrupt industries. The appropriate application of emerging technologies can become the foundation of an organizational transformation journey that leads to improved organizational competitiveness. Conversely, the inappropriate application of any technology can lead to business setbacks and failures.

This course will provide students an understanding of the major financial decisions faced by modern corporations. These activities include investing, financing, mitigating risks, and returning capital to shareholders. Investing activities include acquisitions, mergers, and major capital expenditure investments. Students will estimate investment cashflows and determine how the investment affects firm value. Financing activities include valuing and issuing debt and equity securities to fund investments. Students will evaluate overall capital structure to determine optimal financing composition. Risk mitigation activities include designing hedging strategies to hedge commodity price risk. Students will select risk coverage ratios and evaluate specific forward and option contracts. Finally, students will assess how corporations return capital to its shareholders. These activities include stock repurchases and paying dividends. Students will build financial models to assess the risks and returns of the firm's activities. The models will primarily use spreadsheet software. The spreadsheets will be augmented with VBA programs, macros, and simulation add-ins. Current finance theories will be evaluated and applied to real-world decision making using current tools and technology. This course is relevant to both financial and non-financial managers. Non-financial managers will use course insights to assess the financial risks and returns of investments in areas such as marketing and supply chain. This course provides a foundation of theories and tools used in subsequent elective courses in finance.

This course provides students with an introduction to the foundations of macroeconomic analysis. The primary objective is to develop their ability to apply fundamental macroeconomic concepts from GDP, interest rates, fiscal and monetary policy to understand how policies impact macroeconomic conditions and the environment firms face. Foundational topics in microeconomics include GDP, interest rates, inflation rates and exchange rates. We use modeling techniques to evaluate how different agents in the economy interact (consumers, firms, governments, international trade and the federal reserve) and what the impact of those interactions are on the fundamentals of the economy (GDP and interest rates). The course heavily relies on mathematical and numerical modeling in the analysis of the macroeconomy.

This course starts with the reality that the United States is less influential in global trade, finance, economics, and business than it was in previous decades. Consequently, M.B.A. students need to be aware of the business environments of other countries, the influence of these countries in the global political economy, and new competitors emanating from other parts of the world. About two-thirds of the course is focused on understanding macroeconomic concepts, and analyzing the challenges and opportunities posed by some of the most important countries and regions and the companies headquartered there. Approximately one-third of the course examines global themes that affect virtually all companies, regardless of nationality. Companies that respond creatively to the challenges posed by technology, sustainability, demographic change, urbanization, civil society, and related issues are likely to be more successful than those that do not. The course uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the dynamics of international business, globalization, and country/political risk. After reviewing important features of the international business landscape, we will examine the business environments of the world's major regions and select countries, particularly those where students will be going for Global Immersion, while surveying macroeconomic terms and concepts along the way. The course concludes by examining how transnational themes may affect international business in the coming years.

Global Immersion is designed around a visit to another economic region. In the past. MBA students have visited such countries as Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Turkey, and Singapore. In each country, students visit both local and multinational businesses to understand how a business gets established and run in another country; students also meet with industry and government officials to get their perspectives on the economic policies of the country. Each Immersion is coordinated by a faculty leader who plans the visit so as to appeal to a wide range of student interests.

Business Data Management will enable students to use various database designs to acquire the information needed to make effective business decisions. Successful students will be able to design, create, and implement a relational database and be able to write SQL statements to obtain information from a database. In addition, students will investigate the next generation approaches for storing, manipulating, and managing web data in unstructured formats. Students will gain an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages among XML, NoSQL, NewSQL, and Relational databases. After successfully completing this course, students will have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to: - structure a database, configure it, perform analysis within it, and report from it - have adequate understanding of SQL to retrieve data from a database using SQL query language - design a database system including an ER Model and a UML class diagram, and implement the design in an enterprise database application - understand NoSQL databases, XML native databases, NewSQL databases, and the advantages and disadvantages of these databases.

Business intelligence encompasses the IT tools for exploring, analyzing, integrating, and reporting business data for fact-based, intelligent decision making. This course primarily investigates methods and tools for exploring and analyzing large amounts of business data, also called "Big Data". Learning methods emphasize active learning in the application of methods and tools to real data and the presentation of the results. Students will be exposed to a variety of methods for analyzing both structured and unstructured data and they will work with business data sets to understand the value that can be extracted from large data sets. They will also learn how to classify and associate data to discover business rules that can be used to support decision making. The course will also cover methods to analyze social media information and tools that can facilitate such analysis and discovery. Students will work with data from real social networks to gain an appreciation of how value can be obtained from such networks. Finally, they will learn about techniques for visualizing, presenting, and communicating information in a useful way, e.g. through dashboards and with other technologies on various platforms. Upon successful completion of this course, students will have: - acquired the tools and techniques of data cleaning and preparation, data mining, and data visualization - become competent in analyzing both structured and unstructured data - developed an understanding of, and an appreciation for, the complexities of mining unstructured data such as text data including documents, web pages, emails, etc. - developed an understanding of social networks as well as mobile and location-based analytics

This course explores sustainability as a business opportunity for developing innovative products and services. It will focus on consumer needs related to sustainability, willingness to pay for these needs, and the innovative processes necessary to create sustainable solutions.

This course presents a senior executive perspective on the key opportunities and challenges faced by business leaders. Course content is based on extensive research on the experiences of senior leaders from major organizations around the world. The lessons from these experiences form the backbone of a series of discussions on the changing context for setting strategy and leading organizations in an evolving business environment. Students who complete the course will demonstrate the ability to think strategically about organizational issues and challenges, develop effective strategies for organizational performance and success, and shape organizational cultures that facilitate strategy implementation and organizational change.

This course will provide practical and hands-on exposure to leadership training and exercises that can be applied in a diverse range of professional environments and business settings. Students will assess their own leadership strengths and development areas, develop an individual leadership development plan, apply that plan in a Leadership Immersion experience, and complete a reflection paper upon return. The course provides an opportunity to apply and integrate the knowledge and skills students developed throughout the program with strategic management and leadership concepts. Leadership Immersion off-site components take students to one- to two- day leadership development programs such as: the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) Fire Academy; the U.S. Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia; the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; and Gettysburg National Military Park. All of these off-site immersion experiences focus on leadership in situations that require rapid decision-making, communication, and team cohesion in a stressful or uncertain environment.

A central tenet of this course is that leadership matters. It is a primary driver of organizational success and effectiveness. The course examines a wide range of theories on leadership and various executive leadership styles and increases student awareness of current issues in executive leadership. Students will learn how to apply the different leadership theories and styles to practical settings. The course uses practical methodologies such as case analysis, discussion and debate, and self-analysis to help students explore and apply executive leadership skills in upper-level organizational settings in a manner that motivates their peers and lower-level supervisors and employees toward achieving organizational effectiveness. It will explore how different leadership styles affect others and their organizations, and reflect on their own development as leaders and how improve their own leadership skills. Learning outcomes include developing an understanding of different execute leadership theories, understanding the effectiveness of different leadership styles in different settings and organizational contexts, applying theory to practice, and developing personal execute leadership skills.

Formal courses given on a topical or special interest subject with a professional orientation that may be offered infrequently.